mobi to epub conversion fail and unable to open

[vulcan_girl]

I am trying to convert a book from mobi to epub, but the process fails. When I try to open the book, calibre is also unable to do so. I don't get the DRM message, either. I normally have no problems with mobi, but I also don't have a lot of mobi books either.

Thanks for any help you can give me!

Here is the message from attempting to open the book:

calibre, version 0.8.62
ERROR: Could not open ebook: invalid start byte

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\viewer\main.py", line 40, in run
File "threading.py", line 504, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\oeb\iterator\book.py", line 99, in __enter__
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\conversion.py", line 208, in __call__
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\conversion\plugins\mobi_in put.py", line 40, in convert
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\mobi\reader\mobi8.py", line 70, in __call__
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\mobi\reader\mobi8.py", line 382, in expand_text
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\mobi\reader\markup.py", line 301, in expand_mobi8_markup
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\mobi\reader\markup.py", line 45, in update_internal_links
File "encodings\utf_8.py", line 16, in decode
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9c in position 12270: invalid start byte

And the message from attempting to convert the book:

calibre, version 0.8.62 (win32, isfrozen: True)
Conversion Error: Failed: Convert book 1 of 1 (No Exchanges, No Returns (Book Four of The Return to Redemption Series))

Convert book 1 of 1 (No Exchanges, No Returns (Book Four of The Return to Redemption Series))
Failed to initialize plugin: u'C:\\Users\\me\\AppData\\Roaming\\calibre\\plugin s\\eReader PDB 2 PML.zip'
Resolved conversion options
calibre version: 0.8.62
{'asciiize': False,
'author_sort': None,
'authors': None,
'base_font_size': 10.0,
'book_producer': None,
'change_justification': u'original',
'chapter': u"//*[((name()='h1' or name()='h2') and re:test(., 'chapter|book|section|part\\s+', 'i')) or @class = 'chapter']",
'chapter_mark': u'pagebreak',
'comments': None,
'cover': u'C:\\Users\\me\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\calibre_0.8 .62_tmp_qs7jd3\\f6p3yw.jpeg',
'debug_pipeline': None,
'dehyphenate': True,
'delete_blank_paragraphs': True,
'disable_font_rescaling': False,
'dont_split_on_page_breaks': False,
'duplicate_links_in_toc': False,
'enable_heuristics': False,
'epub_flatten': False,
'extra_css': None,
'extract_to': None,
'filter_css': u'',
'fix_indents': True,
'flow_size': 260,
'font_size_mapping': None,
'format_scene_breaks': True,
'html_unwrap_factor': 0.4,
'input_encoding': None,
'input_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.SonyReaderInput object at 0x03E6E730>,
'insert_blank_line': False,
'insert_blank_line_size': 0.5,
'insert_metadata': True,
'isbn': None,
'italicize_common_cases': True,
'keep_ligatures': False,
'language': None,
'level1_toc': None,
'level2_toc': None,
'level3_toc': None,
'line_height': 0.0,
'linearize_tables': False,
'margin_bottom': 5.0,
'margin_left': 5.0,
'margin_right': 5.0,
'margin_top': 5.0,
'markup_chapter_headings': True,
'max_toc_links': 50,
'minimum_line_height': 120.0,
'no_chapters_in_toc': False,
'no_default_epub_cover': True,
'no_inline_navbars': False,
'no_svg_cover': False,
'output_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.SonyReaderOutput object at 0x03E6EA90>,
'page_breaks_before': u"//*[name()='h1' or name()='h2']",
'prefer_metadata_cover': False,
'preserve_cover_aspect_ratio': False,
'pretty_print': True,
'pubdate': None,
'publisher': None,
'rating': None,
'read_metadata_from_opf': u'C:\\Users\\me\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\calibre_0.8 .62_tmp_qs7jd3\\xelixu.opf',
'remove_fake_margins': True,
'remove_first_image': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing': True,
'remove_paragraph_spacing_indent_size': 1.5,
'renumber_headings': True,
'replace_scene_breaks': u'',
'search_replace': '[]',
'series': None,
'series_index': None,
'smarten_punctuation': False,
'sr1_replace': None,
'sr1_search': None,
'sr2_replace': None,
'sr2_search': None,
'sr3_replace': None,
'sr3_search': None,
'tags': None,
'timestamp': None,
'title': None,
'title_sort': None,
'toc_filter': None,
'toc_threshold': 6,
'unsmarten_punctuation': False,
'unwrap_lines': True,
'use_auto_toc': False,
'verbose': 2}
InputFormatPlugin: MOBI Input running
on C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Temp\calibre_0.8.62_tmp_ qs7jd3\sgmiob.mobi
Found KF8 MOBI of type 'standalone'
Extracting text...
Python function terminated unexpectedly
'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9c in position 12270: invalid start byte (Error Code: 1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site.py", line 132, in main
File "site.py", line 109, in run_entry_point
File "site-packages\calibre\utils\ipc\worker.py", line 192, in main
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\convert\gui_conversion.py", line 31, in gui_convert_override
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\convert\gui_conversion.py", line 25, in gui_convert
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\conversion\plumber.py", line 979, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\conversion.py", line 208, in __call__
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\conversion\plugins\mobi_in put.py", line 40, in convert
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\mobi\reader\mobi8.py", line 70, in __call__
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\mobi\reader\mobi8.py", line 382, in expand_text
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\mobi\reader\markup.py", line 301, in expand_mobi8_markup
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\mobi\reader\markup.py", line 45, in update_internal_links
File "encodings\utf_8.py", line 16, in decode
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9c in position 12270: invalid start byte

[dgatwood]

Sounds like the MOBI file contains an invalid UTF-8 character. Not all arbitrary strings of bytes are valid UTF-8 data, and apparently Calibre is trying to parse the UTF-8 data during the conversion process for some reason. In my experience, these errors usually indicate that the text encoding is not actually UTF-8 (e.g. ISO-8859-1).

See also Calibre bug 1057331 at:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1057331

There probably ought to be a means of overriding the encoding when working with MOBI files that incorrectly specify their encoding. Either that or an option to use the C local (one byte = one character, with no interpretation thereof) and let the user fix the encoding problem in the resulting EPUB file (which is much easier to work with, since it's basically just a ZIP file).